Regulations

Not too many policy moves less popular than this one!

Treasury Department officials are considering rolling back a tax rule aimed at preventing American companies from moving money offshore to avoid U.S. taxes.

The Treasury is looking at regulations intended to prevent American firms from lowering their U.S. tax bills by shifting income to their offshore branches.... The department is also contemplating repealing them entirely to replace them with something more business-friendly.

The Trump administration finalized rule changes to the Endangered Species Act on August 12, 2019 that make it harder to protect plants and animals whose populations are in serious decline.  They are intentionally, significantly weakening the nation's bedrock conservation law credited with rescuing the bald eagle, grizzly bear and American alligator from extinction.

In December 2018, Smart Dissent wrote that the Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency was expected to propose changing the definition of “Waters of the U.S.” to erase federal protections on some waters, shrinking the number of waterways that are protected from industry pollutants.  They were purposely seeking to weaken federal clean water rules designed to protect millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of miles of streams nationwide from pesticide runoff and other pollutants.

FIVE ALARM FIRE.  Now it's a reality.  

Under a new plan released August 23, 2019, hundreds of thousands of acres inside what used to be Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be available for mining

Our banking regulators, who are supposed to create and enforce rules that product us, have removed regulations for Wall Street banks, giving them one of their biggest wins under the Trump administration.

Trump has instructed his Republican Agriculture Secretary to exempt Alaska's 16,700,000 acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions.  This could potentially open up more than half of Tongass—the world's largest intact temperate rain forest—to logging, mining and energy projects.

Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago.

This report from Project On Government Oversight (POGO) found that a federal advisory panel tasked with making policy recommendations to OUR Federal Communication COmmission is stacked with corporate insiders.  This is the definition of corruption: industry members writing the rules to benefit themselves & their rich friends.

Yes, you read that headline correctly.  Trump and EPA head Andrew Wheeler are lifting safeguards that protect communities from toxic coal ash pollution and letting corporate polluters threaten access to clean air and water.

The Trump administration on Wednesday [7/31/19] proposed scrapping restrictions on arsenic-laden waste from coal-fired power plants. 

Senate just confirmed former Dow Chemical lawyer Peter Wright to run EPA’s Superfund toxic cleanup program. He once described himself in a court deposition as Dow’s “dioxin lawyer,” and his former lawyer is linked to hundreds of toxic sites nationwide.

Only the best right?  Only the best.....

BE SMART ABOUT is an important series highlighting examples of those in power (or in danger of acquiring power) who you need to stay informed about so you can share this knowledge and together we can Be Smart and Actively Dissent.

Today we discuss Paul Watkins, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Innovation, a new department created by White House Chief of Staff and right-wing ideologue Mick Mulvaney.